Afterimages
by spidersaremykryptonite
Summary: "Don't you dare. Don't make me go there." It's a shot Sam really doesn't want to take, but he didn't have a choice. It's priority of life. The law said shoot. He shot. Or, what if Helen Mitchell didn't stand down? Tag to Custody 2X17. One-shot.


"You haven't hurt anyone. You haven't threatened anyone. And that's good. It means you'll be with your kids again. Sooner rather than later. But if you raise that gun right now, everything changes. So, please, please just put the gun down." Sam watches the gun rising, falling, bobbing in Helen's uncertain hands.

"Don't you dare. Don't make me go there," he mutters, to himself more than anything else. He knows the team can hear through their headsets, but it's a distant kind of knowing, and one that doesn't matter right now. Right now there is a mother standing in front of her husband and her children, holding a gun.

He keeps his sights trained on her, focused. The rest of the world takes second stage, but only just. He still has to be hyper-aware of what is going on around him, of all the factors that influence the situation. There is one part of his mind cataloging exactly where each of his team mates are standing, keeping an eye on the husband and the kids, watching for crowd members that might interfere… He is standing still, but it's exhausting. It looks like Sarge is de-escalating her, and he wants to heave a sigh of relief, but he knows it's never over till it's over, so he holds steady.

They would go over the transcripts, later, and no one would be able to figure out what changed.

He sees the shift – something intangible that stiffens her muscles and straightens her limbs, hardens all her edges. The gun comes up in one quick fluid motion, she opens her mouth wide as if to shout something to the sky, and the world narrows to this: the recoil of the shot in his hands, the blooming of a dark hollow in her temple, the spray of blood and the way her body begins to curve – a tree bowing in the wind. The metallic smell of gunpowder, and the blurred empty space in his sights where a woman used to be.

For a moment the only sound is his own heartbeat, steady and even. There is a dim awareness of a gray blur moving in to kick the small revolver away. Jules. The blur crouches, small strong hands searching Helen's neck for a pulse she knows she won't find. Sam is an excellent shot.

Sound slams back into his ears the same moment breath slams back into his chest and the world is a sharp kind of chaos. Flickering red and blue lights, the blaring sirens as another squad car comes barrelling in, Ed's swearing coming through his headset and the loudest kind of silence from the rest of the team. He lowers the gun, finally, and his eyes catch on the pool of red spreading out from Helen's head. Nothing he hasn't seen before, but it seems redder than it ever has against her paling skin, glinting in the September sun on the road.

Her husband is screaming, folding over into himself, held back by two officers. The children are clinging to their father, wailing, their faces crumpled in that fear-grief expression, only half understanding what is happening. It is a look that Sam recognizes, remembers the feeling with an aching intimacy, and he thinks of the folded up newspaper cut-out that he keeps in a drawer – the one with that picture. On the day that his little sister died, there was a lucky newspaper photographer walking nearby. The General had the story pulled right away, but Sam found a copy, and kept it. A lost little boy holding a small white sandal. He takes it out to keep him company on the anniversary, when all he wants is to crawl inside a bottle, but doesn't let himself. He knows where that road leads.

There is a sudden hand on his shoulder, and Sarge is steering him away, telling him that SIU is on their way. Hold tight. He lets Sarge turn him from the scene, but knows that he doesn't need a photograph for this – he will never forget the faces of those children staring at their mother's body.

Sarge stops him alongside the fence. "It was a good shot, Sam." His voice is sad, tired, and unbearably loud in Sam's ringing ears. Sam swallows, meets his eyes. Nods. He is a soldier; he is good at maintaining composure. Sarge nods to a nearby patrolman, gives Sam's shoulder one more squeeze and lets his hand drop heavy to his side as he heads back to the scene. Sam can hear them all, familiar voices in his ear. Giving directions, checking and putting away equipment, crowd control. Jules is ushering the children away – he can hear their cries through the microphone too. He can't help glancing back to the scene, framed by the still flashing lights. He sees the flap of the white sheet in the wind as it is lowered over the body, waving the surrender she didn't give them, and his even, practiced sniper breathing falters. Turning abruptly away, he tries to regain the count, but when he pulls off his gloves his hands are shaking in a way they haven't since his first fatal shot in Afghanistan, since the first time a friend died in his arms, since he found Matt's body, mangled and destroyed and his fault in a dust-filled, sun-scorched valley.

 _No. You don't fall apart here. Pull it together Braddock._ He clenches his fists, but for all his willpower, something still has to give, so he braces his back on the chain links of the fence and allows himself to slide to the ground. _Breathe._

When SIU arrives, screeching onto the scene, he has reigned in his breathing and the trembling in his hands and is staring hollowly at the dirt under his feet. The team has been tossing pained worried glances his way as they bustle about, their teammate's slumped posture horribly unfamiliar. They notice the way he pulls himself back to rigidity as the SIU approaches. He pushes himself up, robotically hands over his firearms. Allows them to lead him by the arm to their car where he pauses and finds Sarge in the messy aftermath. He nods, ignoring the deep crease between Sarge's eyebrows and the frown on his lips, and slides into the cool leather interior, abruptly dim compared to the brightness outside. The car pulls smoothly away from the scene, and he feels like a strange kind of traitor, leaving his team behind. The ride is quiet, and he spends it staring out the window without focus.

He knows the procedure. He is led to a room in the tower where he is stripped of his vest, his uniform, and given fresh clothes to put on. There is no humiliation in it anymore. The SIU investigators run the interview and badger him, and his lawyer sits beside him and badgers right back. They run through the entire incident. Sam sits passively and answers any question put to him, and volunteers nothing else.

"Why did the subject re-escalate?" the SIU officer demands. It's Goalsky – one of Sam's least favorite interviewers.

"I don't know." He keeps his tone flat.

"So why did you take the shot?"

"There was imminent threat to an officer." Priority of life. Victims, officers, subjects. She pointed her gun at Sarge. Sarge told her not to, begged her not to, and Sam forbade it though he doubted she knew that, but she did it anyway, and she was lower on the totem pole. They aren't judges. They uphold the law. Law said shoot. He shot.

"And you're confident that all other modes of resolution were exhausted?" They are the standard questions, but Goalsky turns all of them into accusations. _Don't rise._

"My Sargent was trying to negotiate. She raised her weapon on him. I took the shot." His lawyer intercepts the next question before it makes it out of Goalsky's mouth. He is a different kind of aggressive – he'd talk you into submission with a wall of words almost jovially.

"Imminent threat to an officer, how straightforward can you get? Come on Goalsky. Lethal force was clearly justified. We've been through it all. We know the drill. Are we good here? We done?" Goalsky frowns, narrows his eyes, stares grudgingly. Sits back, crosses his arms and glares for a moment before jerking his head. Sam's lawyer pats him on the shoulder as they push back the uncomfortable metal chairs and stand.

He knows where they are going next – mandatory post-incident counselling check. Sam isn't bothered. Dr. Luria never let the team get away with anything, but Dr. Luria transferred and her replacement doesn't have the same sharpness about her. Sam knows he can give all the right answers and be out of there in no time. He should probably be more concerned about that, but right now all he wants to be is home. He's right, and half an hour later and he is stepping out of the building. SIU took long enough that he's sure the debrief back at Headquarters is probably already done, the team likely out on patrol. They all know that even if the shift isn't over, unless it's a real shit-storm, subject officers are off duty until at least the next shift, usually a day more for the case to be reviewed.

He knew that it was still day-time, logically, but the brightness of the sun as he pushes through the glass doors still feels a bit like a strike to the chest. He remembers the empty ache of looking at the rest of your day and feeling like the world should be ending when everyone else is bustling along like nothing has changed, remembers it from after a landmine snatched a teammate from them with sharp careless claws. He thought he left those behind in Kandahar. Thought that James would be the last brother-in-arms whose face would haunt him with quiet clicks and the _can't-breathe_ helplessness of realization and the way the world stopped before it shattered.

SIU offers him a ride back to Headquarters since his things are still there and the team has the trucks. He nods and follows the driver back to the car, slipping his hands into his pockets. More heavy silence fills the short drive. If Sam had been paying attention he would have seen the driver's eyes, framed in crinkled skin, flicking back to linger on him in the mirror, might have noticed the way each glance was accompanied with a softening in the eyes, a downturned tug of thinned lips.

They pull up to the familiar angular building and Sam slips lithely out of the car, pushing shut the door and absentmindedly slapping his hand twice on the roof in thanks. He turns his back and walks towards the door, hearing the car pull away behind him. If he had been paying attention… but he wasn't. The slight echo of his footsteps follows him down the hall. Winnie is busily issuing directions into her com, but she looks up in greeting and offers a smile when he taps on her desk in passing. Winnie is good people as his mom would say. Good police, he thinks. Team One knows better than to underestimate the importance and skill of their dispatchers.

He's right that the team is out on patrol, and the barn is pretty quiet. He pushes into the empty locker room. On the way to his locker, he is arrested by the familiar plaque gleaming on the empty one that used to be Lew's and a sharp ache in his chest. He reaches out to rest a hand along the edge and stares at Lew's smiling face.

 _Constable_

 _Lewis Young_

 _Who Gave_

 _His Life_

 _To Keep the Peace_

He pushes away the grief rising in his throat, tapping the locker and turning away. He pulls open his own with practiced movements and slips the bracelet off the hook where he keeps it. He doesn't wear it often - the just-there weight on his wrist makes him ache for the dog tags he pressed into Matt's mother's trembling hands - but today feels like a day where he needs a friend with him, even if only in spirit. The room is filled with the whir of the air-conditioning, blowing wind across his skin, and if it is only ghostly in force, it feels all the more like it might knock him over.

Unsteady is not something Sam is ever comfortable being. Unsteady in the field gets you killed, gets you captured, gets _other_ people killed. He sits heavily on the bench to hold his head in his hands. _Unsteady, unsteady, unsteady._ _Damn it!_ He wants to curl up into a ball, lose himself in a burning hot shower, go speeding down the road in a damn fast car, break something, punch someone, jump off a freaking – _Stop_.

Eyes squeezed shut tightly, fists curled inwards, short fingernails digging into his palms just enough to be a point of focus. He lets out a long low breath, shoves up off the bench and collects what he needs out of his locker. His bike waits for him in the parking lot, and he turns the key to his bike lock over in his hands, each flip like pulling a petal from a flower as a child. _He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me…_ he can't decide if the childlike voice chanting in his mind belongs to his sister or the little girl who watched her mother die today. _Watched me murder her mother._ His hands still and he swallows hard, slipping the small silver key into his pocket. He shuts his locker door softly and slings his backpack over his shoulder. He hasn't decided whether to ride his bike home as usual, or catch a cab – can't decide if the ache he feels all over will be dispelled by the effort or worsened. Thoughts and arguments are swirling in his mind, and he is staring absently at the floor as he ambles down the hall.

"Sam!" He is startled out of his mental cyclone by Winnie's voice and he looks over to see her standing behind her desk. "I called you a cab, it's waiting out front." Her mouth balances itself between sympathy and a smile, all softness. For once, Sam is grateful to have a decision taken out of his hands and he returns an approximation of a smile. He's not sure he really manages it, but she seems to understand, sitting back down and turning her attention to the glowing screens.

Outside, the sun still gleaming off the windows, he slides into the cab and rattles off his address. The cabbie nods and pulls out of the driveway. The ride is silent but for the radio on low on some country station, and Sam is relieved that the driver isn't one of the chatty ones – making small talk with a stranger is so far from what he wants to do right now. They pull up in front of his building, and Sam presses a few bills into the man's hand over the seat before grabbing his bag and getting out of the cab.

The walk to his apartment feels ridiculously long considering it's only a single set of stairs and a hallway, and then he's fumbling with his keys to unlock the door. Inside, he lets the door click shut gently behind him, and he's alone in the emptiness of his apartment. His bag drops to the floor, and he follows, sliding down the door as he had done with the fence to rest his elbows on his knees and hold his head in his hands. There's sunlight glaring through the windows and off the countertops, and Sam is acutely aware that it's only 3 o'clock in the afternoon, but all he wants is to crawl into bed. Instead, he spends a moment catching his breath before he pushes back up off the floor, tosses his bag away from the doorway before dragging himself into the shower. He washes quickly, and then stands under the spray, just shy of burning trying to think about nothing. He only turns off the water when the images of Helen's body intrude and he can no longer push them away. He pulls on his softest sweatpants and his favorite comfy shirt, settling down on the couch. He tries getting into the book he's reading, but can't force his brain to focus on the words on the page, so he sticks his bookmark back in it and tosses it away, reaching instead for the remote. He flicks through the channels listlessly, skipping quickly over the CSI reruns, and avoiding anything in the genre of family feel-good, finally settling on marathon rerun of Survivor.

And that's where he stays, clicking on the side lamp when it gets so dark that the light from his tv flickers across the walls, only getting up to reheat leftovers for dinner, until 11 o'clock. He shuts off the tv and clicks the lamp back off. As he wanders towards his bedroom the only light is from the streetlamps outside the window and the glowing numbers on the microwave. He doesn't turn on any lights, but slides immediately under the blankets and drifts numbly off to sleep.

He dreams – of course he does – of Helen, the shot stretching out into an impossibly long moment, the bullet a glinting blaze that he tracks through the air, frozen in his own body. When the bullet finally connects with her skull, and he can hear the shattering of bone, the scene jumps. Her body is splayed across beige carpet, and Helen's two children kneel in her blood, leaving tiny footprints with the plastic feet of their dolls, tire tracks with a toy fire truck that the boy rolls across his mother's stomach. The children drop their toys dragging their hands through the blood to paint each other's faces, red trailing down their arms to drip from their elbows back to the carpet, while their high-voiced giggling echoes through the room. Helen's finger twitches, and Sam falls to the carpet beside her, jabbing his fingers to her throat to check for a pulse. He doesn't find one, but he begins pumping his hands on her chest. _One, two, three, four, five -_ the children turn, clambering over to sit cross legged in the blood, heads tilted slightly to the side, the whites of their eyes shining from their red-painted faces, the blood drying and crackling like wrinkles across their young skin.

He wakes up in the dark, shivering. His blankets are a twisted mess flopped on the floor, creases and folds creating dark hollows by the dim red light of his alarm clock. 4 A.M. He twists around to sit on the edge of the bed, running a lightly trembling hand through his short hair. His skin feels feverish, his body humming with an illusion of frailty. He doesn't notice that he's crying at first. Once he does, he is acutely aware that he can't seem to stop as his shoulders shake and he ends up gasping for breath, pressing one hand to his mouth, the other wrapping around his middle as if he could physically hold himself together. There is a growing tightness in his chest, and he struggles to draw breath and this too is a feeling he remembers, remembers from the first night after Matt, remembers how it seemed like an age before he could draw a proper breath of air, held hostage by shadows in the hot desert tent. _Braddock's don't have panic attacks, they don't have panic attacks, they don't –_ except he is. Again. How many times has he told that lie to himself when the nightmares leave him shaking and drowning?

He also remembers somberly picking through neutralized targets in the valley, remembers turning over one more body that wasn't just another body, and how his bullet had mangled and destroyed his best friend, how he stumbled back unable to believe what he was seeing but his body knew, was certain, was already retching as he turned away, the army rations burning their way back up his throat to splatter in the rust coloured sand, choking desperately on air as his stomach turned itself inside out.

And whether it's spurred on by this memory, or the nightmare, his stomach is suddenly churning again. Still gasping, struggling to breathe through tears and crushed lungs, he is tripping towards the bathroom, one hand sliding across the wall to the light switch, the other already reaching for the toilet lid as he is blinded by the sudden illumination. He drops to the edge of the bathtub, bracing himself against the toilet, pressing his free hand tightly across his mouth. Hunched over, he swallows reflexively, again and again.

He hates being sick. Hates the way vomit burns its way back up his throat, hates the way it feels so much like drowning when he can't get a breath in, hates the way it splatters hotly from his lips, and the smell, and the taste of it at the back of his throat, and the pain of it in his stomach and everything about the way it feels, and the way it is a battle he always loses.

Mid-swallow, all his muscles clench unbidden, and the reheated leftovers he had for dinner are forcing their way violently back up his throat, an agonizing second that feels like ages. He has barely a split-second reprieve before the second heave, and the third, and again, and again, until his stomach is empty, and then twice more, painfully, for good measure.

He is trembling, still gasping, and all his muscles feel as though they have turned to sludge, to air, to nothing, and he thinks, this is what an earthquake feels like to the winds skimming its surface, and then he thinks, what an absurd thing to think, and then he thinks, bullets are like earthquakes, and he thinks stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, and he's still shaking and he still can't breathe, and he just wants it all to stop, and god that's a dangerous thought to have, stop it, stop it, _stop it._

He doesn't go back to sleep. When he can finally catch his breath he flushes the toilet, brushes his teeth, washes his face – all on autopilot. He paces, afraid to sit down for a second, afraid to stop moving, so he paces until the tremors stop _(snipers don't tremble, they don't have tremors, snipers are steady, they're steady, they're steady)._ He doesn't glance at the drawer with the photograph in it.

He feels calm when the sun rises, or something like it that really is probably something more like numb. And then he remembers that he won't be on shift today because they're still reviewing the case and he stops mid stride in the growing light of his bedroom because alone with himself enclosed in the box of his apartment is not somewhere he wants to stay but he doesn't know where to go. Eventually his limbs unlock, and now the sun is really grappling with his shades to spill across the room, to light up his torso with a soft brush of warmth. He doesn't know what to do, but he needs to do something.

Something turns out to be a shower and breakfast in the form of a banana and granola bar. And then it turns out to be sliding his phone and wallet into the pocket of his jeans and locking the door behind him. And then it turns out to be wandering through downtown aimlessly, where everything is loud and fast and he thinks maybe the thoughts he so desperately wants to avoid won't be able to find him in the crowd.

He's not entirely sure how longs he walks for, turning down street after street until he's not actually sure where he is, mostly because he hasn't been paying attention, before he sees a woman struggling with several very large rectangular bags at a car parked by the curb. Before he consciously thinks it, he's speeding up.

"Do you need some help?" He's a few feet away from her, and when she turns he can tell she's surprised at the offer. She's dark skinned, tightly curled hair held back from her face by a colourful scarf, fairly tall and lithe, eyes and mouth accented at their corners with laugh lines. She's older, he'd guess in her 50s.

"Yes, please, that would be wonderful." She smiles at him with a bit of an exasperated laugh as she drops the bags she had been attempting to settle in her arms back into the trunk of the car. He can see now that they're animal food, the big papery bags of dog and cat kibble, and wonders why on earth she needs so much of it, because there's three bags of each in the car.

He hoists two of the bags in his arms and she pulls out another two, placing them on the ground to close the trunk and lock the car before pulling them up into her arms in an oddly graceful move.

"Right over here," she calls out, leading him to the storefront just beside the car and pushing through the door, greeted with a merrily jangling bell. _Sue's Pet Rescue and Adoption Center_ the sign proclaims, and suddenly it makes sense. Inside, they're greeted by the distinct, though not unpleasant smell of animal, a short chorus of barking, and bright fluorescent lights. The walls are painted a lovely shade of robin's egg blue, decorated with decals of paw prints; behind a floor to ceiling glass wall a crowd of cats lounge and weave around scratching posts and towers; the other wall is taken up half by another large room behind glass where a gaggle of dogs of various sizes (he doesn't really know dog breeds, but he recognizes the distinctive colours of a Dalmatian, and the tiny puffy frame of a Pomeranian among them) press themselves against the glass, jumping up against it and jostling each other; the rest of the wall is made up of large individual cages, each holding a dog. To the right is a desk, behind which a young woman stands, and behind her he can see a wall of smaller glass cages, most of which look empty, some that might be occupied, and in one he spies an astoundingly fluffy white rabbit. The young woman looks up at the jangle of the bell as they enter.

"Sue! You should have told me you were back, I could've helped."

"No need Janel," she says, and Sam can hear laughter in her voice. From the way Janel's eyes roll good-naturedly, he gets the feeling this is an often repeated conversation. The woman – Sue – half-turns to look at him over his shoulder. "Just through here," she directs him, as she pushes through a swinging door near the desk into a well-lit and organized back room full of pet supplies of all kinds. She bends towards the ground and lets the food bags slide out of her arms to the ground with a thump, and he follows suit. She brushes off her clothes briskly, tugs on her flannel shirt to straighten it and holds out her hand.

"I'm Sue," she says warmly and he reaches out to take her hand.

"Sam." She grins, pumping their hands once in a brisk handshake.

"Thank you very much for your help Sam." She leads him back out the doors into the main area where most of the dogs are still on their feet weaving near the front of the glass enclosure with wagging tails.

"No problem, did you want to get those last two bags?" He wants her to say yes, because for a minute the weight of the awkward bags in his arms gave him something to do and he was roused from the stupor he'd been wandering around in all day.

"No need, Janel and I can get them later." He nods, still smiling as though he is not disappointed and again without a tether. He doesn't notice that she notices. Doesn't notice the slight change in the set of her shoulders, doesn't notice Janel zeroing in on the shift, and the look she directs at Sue, an exasperated 'here she goes again.' He's about to say it was lovely to meet her and turn away when she speaks again. "You know the dogs will be all riled up, having a stranger come in, if you don't say hello to them. Would you mind very much going in and letting them get it out of their system?" It's an odd request, he thinks, brow furrowing ever so slightly, but he's not really in a hurry to leave anyway.

"Um, sure, I could do that."

"Wonderful!" she exclaims, and her eyes crinkle up as she smiles widely. She bustles (as much as such a thin and graceful woman can bustle) over to the glass wall where the dogs are, and as she pulls out a key Sam notices that there is a door built into part of the glass wall that he hadn't seen the first pass by it. She cracks the door as the dogs inside tumble over each other to get to her and slips in, careful not to let any of them out, and gestures for him to do the same.

He is immediately swarmed, the bigger dogs muscling up to him and threatening to bowl him over as they push at his legs, the smaller ones hopping to try to get around them to reach him, all tumbling enthusiastically around each other. He only has two hands but he tries to pet all of them at once and it's a mess of fur and slobber and energy, and he can't help but laugh, really laugh. Eventually he just gives in and crouches down, laughingly trying to push off the bigger dogs that lick at his face, running hands over fur of all different textures. He's busy with the dogs, so he can't see the satisfied look that Sue is giving him, standing nearby with her arms crossed over her chest.

Eventually the dogs begin to calm down, more content to wander off to gnaw at toys or lay beside him and wait for him to pet them.

"I think they like you." Sam looks up to see Sue smiling down at him, and he grins back at her, sincerely this time.

"That was certainly something," he says. He's had enough experience with dogs to know vaguely how to handle them, but he's never had a pet of his own. The swarm was a new experience. "Are they all rescues?"

"Most of them," she says, nodding. "Some were strays, some were dropped off by owners who couldn't keep them anymore, some we took in as overflow from the city run shelters; they've all got stories." She introduces him to each one individually – Ralph, who was found on the street, injured, with long matted hair almost a year ago, and who's an unidentifiable mix of breeds; PomPom the Pomeranian who turned out to be too much energy for the owners and their very young daughter; Archie the Dalmatian who had been left behind when the owners moved away; Gandalf, Kahlua, and Aloha, who had come from a nearby SPCA that was full to capacity; and all the rest.

He spends a little more time finding the perfect spots to scratch on the dogs – Kahlua in particular seemed to adore him, and being scratched right behind the left ear – before he clambers back to his feet, attempting to brush copious amounts of hair off his pants. Outside the glass room, Sue takes one look at him and hustles over to the desk, returning with a lint roller.

"We keep them on hand for the customers," she said, holding it out to him.

"That seems like an excellent idea," he replies with a smile, running the roller over his clothes. Once he's mostly clean of hair, he hands the roller back to her.

"Thanks." Her lips quirk up again in a smile.

"And thank you." He nods once to both Sue and Janel and heads for the door. Just as he pushes it open, Sue calls out to him.

"Sam, if you ever want to come and just spend some time with the animals, our doors are open." She sees a complicated expression that she can't quite decipher flit across his face, then he nods once more and the door clangs shut behind him.

Sue turns to look at Janel behind her. "He'll come back."

It takes a little while, but he does. SIU clears him in the shooting, and he's back at work the next day, avoiding the curious and concerned looks of his teammates and evading their questions about how he's doing with his trademark, "Fine." And he is, fine that is. At least, that's what he pretends, what he tells himself to get through the days. Almost a week passes before the nightmares and panic attacks drive him back to Sue's Pet Rescue.

He wanders in around midday after a long night shift of fairly small-time calls. It's pretty busy, the clang of the bell lost in the noise of the dogs and the people talking. He slouches over to stand in front of the cat room with his hands in his pockets, watching the lazily flicking tail of a large tabby. It's a few minutes before anyone notices him.

Sam hears the purposeful footsteps headed his way, even through the busy din of the place and tenses reflexively. "Sam!" He turns to see Sue standing beside him, this time wearing jeans and a red sweater with a red scarf in her hair. "Good to see you again." He swallows anxiously.

"Hi, I was just, uh…"

"Cats or dogs?" She interrupts when he seems to be having a hard time finding the right words.

"Pardon?"

"Would you like to sit with the cats, or the dogs?" she clarifies.

"Uh, cats, please," he answers slightly bemusedly.

"I thought so." She smiles and pulls out a set of keys, already reaching to unlock the glass door. She ushers him in, and pulls the door mostly shut behind him.

"I've got to get back to some customers, I'll leave the door unlocked, just let me or Janel know when you're done so we can lock it back up. Stay as long as you like." She grins once more at him and pulls the door all the way shut, turning and wandering away. He stands there for a moment before something brushes against his leg. A skinny grey cat with one white paw is winding its way through around his ankles, its tail clinging and curling around his leg. It looks soft, and when he reaches down, it turns its face into his hand to rub against him.

It's very strange, he thinks, as he moves to sit cross legged on the floor further into the room, being suddenly alone, but also not, surrounded by milling cats, and a small crowd just on the other side of the glass.

He stays for half an hour, petting the cats that wander over to him, watching the ones that stay away. When he squeezes back out of the room, careful not to let any of the cats escape, he motions to Sue across the room, and when he's sure that he's caught her eye, he slips out the door before she can say anything.

The next time he comes is a week and a half later, and he sits with the dogs for just over an hour. The time after that, he sits with the cats for two, and the time after that it's near closing, just after an exhausting shift and Sue finally manages to corner him, and ask if he'd like some tea. It would have been rude not to accept, considering what she was letting him do, so he follows her through the back room he'd seen the first time he came to a cozy room that seems to be an office, a lounge, and a kitchen all in one. Sue brews a pot of fruity herbal tea, and they sit in armchairs. Sue is quick to smile, content to do most of the talking, telling him how she inherited quite a lot of money when her father died, and she decided to open the Pet Rescue. It doesn't make a lot of profit, but she doesn't mind. She tells him stories about some of the animals she's had come through, but she also seems content to sit in silence with him. It becomes a routine – he comes once a week, sometimes more if he's feeling lonely, or bored, or after particularly rough days. He sits with the cats, or the dogs. Sue tells him that the ones that they keep in separate cages are usually the ones that were abused, or are shy and can't handle the hubbub of the mixed room. After that he adds them into the rotation, sitting with them, even though some of them refuse to come near him at first. When he's done visiting the animals, if they're not too busy, Sue will make them some tea and they sit in the back room to drink it.

He starts to gain the trust of the lone dogs, and they begin to let him pet them, cuddle them. Sue starts to gain his trust too – she's easy to like, easier to talk to than he ever could've imagined. He tells her about his job, first just the basic things, the easy things. But she's a good listener, and eventually he branches into the more difficult things. She tells him things too, about how her husband was killed by a drunk driver four years ago, how her father struggled for years with Alzheimer's, how her daughter lives in Vancouver with her husband and Sue almost never gets to see her. He tells her about his dad, about the military, eventually he tells her about Matt and she reaches out to gently take his hand in silence, not prying, letting him get his composure back. And it goes on like that, the animals, and his and Sue's strange growing friendship. He brings lunch by sometimes, or dinner, and she brings pastries, or cookies, and insists he take some home with him. Eventually she invites him to dinner at her house, where he meets her two dogs, Runner and Igor, and her three cats, Delilah, Zigzag, and, of all names, Pants – rescue pets she fell in love with and couldn't bear to see them go. Five is her limit she says, she won't take any more, but he knows her well enough at this point to raise an eyebrow and give a sceptical smirk.

The nightmares come less often now, and the panic attacks too. They don't disappear completely, of course not, but they're fewer and more far between and that's something he hasn't really had in a long time. He's happier, lighter, and the team notices. Jules marvels at the change in him, remembering the arrogant military rat she thought he was when he first joined the team, and then the sadness and weight she learned to see in his shoulders all the time. Ed marvels at the change, remembering the way Sam walked haunted for weeks after shooting Helen Mitchell, remembering the ghosts he saw in Sam's eyes, the same kind of ghosts he sees every time he looks in a mirror, or down a scope. Ed rarely sees the ghosts in Sam anymore, and he doesn't understand because every day there are more dogging his own footsteps.

Eventually Sue convinces Sam to adopt – not a dog, his job would never allow him to take proper care of one, but a cat, they decide, a cat he can manage. He ends up with the little grey cat who curled around his legs the first time he went back. He names her Corporal, which makes Sue laugh.

He thinks that Sue knows him best of anyone in the world, this once-stranger that he met by chance on the street, who saw him when all he could see were the afterimages of blood and corpses. How odd, how strange, how wonderful.

After Ed is forced to shoot May Dalton, Sam wrangles him into his car and drives the route he knows by heart. It's afternoon, busy hour at the shop, but Sue gave Sam his own set of keys to the store and the cages ages ago, so he drags Ed over to the dogs and shoves him in where the horde descends on him. Sam is watching Ed try to manage the leaping maniacs, imagining that this must be how he himself looked all that time ago when he feels her presence beside him. He turns to her with a smile, and she nods and smiles back at him. Sue always has room for a few more strays.

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 **AN: Reviews! Those would make my day, so please, let me know what you think!**


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